If I have heard it once I have heard it a million times...."Your house is so clean...it looks like a magazine...how do you keep your house so organized..." And this last week a friend of mine came over to find my house in less than perfect form, which it actually looks like alot, and said "I feel so much better that it is noon and your bed is not made yet! I have never seen your house messed up".
To be quite honest my house is messy alot, right now it is 8:41 am, the bed is not made, and the breakfast dishes are on the counter still. Damage from a weekend indoors due to rain is still very evident around here.
Even though she was trying to pay me a compliment I actually felt bad. To make it worse, while laughing about it with another friend of mine, my friend told me I make people feel inadequate when they come to my house because it is always so clean. Talk about deflation! I have always been proud to have a clean house, although as you have seen through my How Often Do You Clean It series my house is far from squeaky clean. I do my best to maintain a clean and organized house. The only thing I can say to my friends and those of you out there who look at blogs and judge your house based on someone elses is this....
WE ARE ALL IN DIFFERENT SEASONS OF LIFE!
I think this is the single most important thing for us to remember especially when we fill our time comparing our lives and house to someone elses. Just as you usually only see the clean side of my house, you cant judge who I am and how I live on that alone. What we see in blogs and magazines is what that person wants to show us, we cant go through life believing that everyone has it together all the time, yes one wall may be absolutely amazing and well put together, but who knows what the other side looks like.
We live in a world where ALL of our photos are photoshoped and beautified in some way or another.
For example I have acne, I have said it before. In any picture I post of myself on here or facebook I always photoshop my acne right off my face. I am insecure about being 30 with the face of a 14 year old boy going through pubertyy. I show you what I want you to see. And it is the same for every single blog out there.
I am very blessed to be in the season of life that I am in right now. I have two boys who are in school from 8-3 every day and a husband who works full time, while my job is being a stay at home wife and mom. My JOB is not to be the constant caregiver to my kids as it once was, but it is to care for my home and family. My job is the laundry, yard work, cleaning and organizing, grocery shopping and meal prep, school volunteering, and much more. And because that is my job and I dedicate 8 hours a day to it I am able to maintain MY comfortable level of cleanliness and organization.
Key words MY COMFORT LEVEL!
Most of my friends and most of you out there in blogland are still the full time caregivers for your kids or working full or part time. Expectation levels can not be the same! I am able to dedicate so much time to my home because I am not taking away from anything else. And at 3:15 when my kids are home that is my time for the kids. What I don't get done waits till the next day.
Going back to the key words...my comfort level means that not only are we all in different seasons of life but we also all have different comfort levels in our home. Some like that magazine cover feel in their house and some don't. For me, I am able to be more calm when my house is ALL in order. Yes I let my hair down and let it get dirty, when we have friends and kids over I am not freaking out about the dirt...I can clean it tomorrow! So if you are comfortable with a little dirt on the floor and dishes in the sink more power to you! Don't be someone else, that effort will make you more tired and frustrated. Grab hold of who you are and love it.
If you are living in an unorganized home that is difficult to clean and maintain and do not like but perhaps you don't know where to start then be excited! Over the next few days I will be giving some tips on how to get clean and organized and how to maintain it. The key is MAINTAIN! Once we can rummage through all the nonsense we fill our lives and homes with, and clear it out, maintaining it really isn't that hard.
I wrote this post for a few reasons, the first is I want people to know it is OK to live in a house that is not completely finished, decorated, clean or organized. Don't judge the book by its cover. Second, for us to remember we are all in different seasons of life, no two are exactly the same.
Strive to be the BEST YOU, not the BEST HER!
God gave us all different talents, some are good decorators, some are not. We all have something we are good at. And third, because I want to help those who are stuck in a rut and don't know where to start. I want to outline some key things I have learned through the years and have implemented myself. I don't do these things all the time, but I try to so that I can maintain what I enjoy.
So please, I encourage you to come back tomorrow for Clearing the Clutter! These posts will be full of tips, tricks and questions to ask your self.
And if you want to see that my house does get dirty check out the How Often series.
Outline of posts in this series:
Clearing the Clutter
Developing Systems (a series in a series)
Maintaining Organization
Jen
I am linking this series up to:
Posts
3 comments:
I always figure that when people see my house, it makes them feel better about theirs. Yep, it's usually looks very lived in, but when you have 4 kids and work full time, that's life!
I just ran across your blog. What a sweet post. I think we all need to be reminded from time to time that we are all in different seasons of life. Thanks for posting!
Well written and you make some very good points. I can't wait to read the rest of this series!
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